Robert Cullen, “Report from Romania: Down with the Tyrant,” The New Yorker, 2 April 1990. Late the next night, Romanian television showed Ceausescu’s corpse, lying in a pool of blood. After that, the Securitate resistance wilted, although sporadic sniping continued for a week or so. It turned out that not all of the Securitate fighters were Romanian. A ranking member of the National Salvation Front told me that about a hundred of them, including some who fought the longest, were from Syria, Iraq, Libya, and other countries with histories of involvement in terrorism. They had come to Romania ostensibly as exchange students, but had in fact received commando training. In return, they agreed to serve the Securitate for several years. As these foreigners were captured, and rumors–accurate ones–about their origins began to spread, the Front publicly denied that any Arabs had been involved with the Securitate. It did so because it wished to avoid any trouble in relations with the Arab world, the Front official explained. I asked what would become of the captured Arab commandos, and he responded by silently drawing his index finger across his throat.

pasaport libian…

Romanian Army Rankled by Interference;Defector Cites Long-Standing Friction Between Military and State Security Forces

The violence that has erupted in Romania between the army and state security forces loyal to deposed president Nicolae Ceausescu is rooted in long-standing friction between the two institutions that has sharpened dramatically recently, a high-level Romanian defector said yesterday.

Lidiu Turcu, who worked with the foreign intelligence branch of the Department of State Security, known as the Securitate, until his defection in Austria last January, said a special directorate monitored the loyalty of top army officers. As Ceausescu’s paranoia increased, he appointed his brother Ilia as first deputy minister of defense and chief of the political directorate in the army.

The military deeply resented that interference, he said. Also angering the military was the removal several years ago of two high-ranking generals denounced by Securitate informers for cultivating connections at the Soviet Embassy in Bucharest, he said. There have been reports that the two were killed and dumped into the Black Sea from a helicopter, but Turcu said he could not confirm the story.

The well-equipped and dreaded security forces appear to number about 45,000 to 50,000 men, including 25,000 troops who live in barracks on the outskirts of major cities and 20,000 officers, technical personnel, and specialists, he said. That figure is far less than the up to 700,000 reported in recent days in other accounts from the region.

The officers and specialists were drawn from universities until several years ago. But in the 1980s, Turcu said, Ceausescu’s wife, Elena, ordered that recruitment of university students be stopped and that less-educated factory personnel be selected instead.

The uniformed force of fighters includes many young men who were taken from orphanages at an early age. These security soldiers, educated and trained at special schools, have no family loyalties and were indoctrinated to view Ceausescu as a father figure, Turcu said.

As Ceausescu’s fear of an internal threat to his security grew, he reportedly turned to a new “Directorate 5″ in the Securitate that had the responsibility for “defense of the leadership of the party.” Presumably this is the force involved in some of the recent fighting.

Growing evidence of atrocities perpetrated by the security forces against unarmed demonstrators-shooting into crowds in Timisoara and Bucharest-has raised questions about whether foreign mercenaries may be involved. Turcu said the massacres go against Ceausescu’s dictum of “no martyrs,” which was often repeated to his inner circle.

Turcu said he talked yesterday with a friend in Bucharest who reported being forced to evacuate his apartment complex by armed Arab commandos.

The former intelligence official said he was aware of a secret agreement between Ceausescu and Palestine Liberation Organization chairman Yasser Arafat that allowed PLO groups to use Romanian territory for “logistical support.” He said Interior Minister Tudor Postelnicu, who oversaw the security forces, was present at a recent meeting between Ceausescu and Arafat.

Romanian cooperation with the PLO began in the late 1960s, Turcu said, but intensified in the past three years. He said rival PLO groups coexist within Romanian territory, but the agreement forbade clashes between these groups and prohibited their possession of arms. One job of the Securitate was to ensure that the PLO factions were obeying the agreement, Turcu said.

In addition to the PLO factions, he said, Syrian, Libyan, Iraqi and Iranian military or special operations units have been trained at a camp near Buzau, in the Carpathian foothills.

Contrary to reports that the security forces lived lavishly, Turcu said that except for higher salaries, most ordinary officials did not have access to special restaurants and stores stocked with Western electronic goods. He suggested that security officials resorted to corruption and abuse of office to satisfy their needs, which exacerbated the public’s hatred and fanned the fury that burst over the past week.

CONTACT WITH QADDAFI Tripoli Voice of Greater Arab Homeland – A telephone contact took place between the brother leader of the revolution (Qaddafi) and Ion Iliescu, President of the People’s Committee for National Salvation in Rumania in order to set his mind at rest with regard to the progress of the popular revolution there. The President of the People’s Committee for National Salvation reassured the brother leader of the revolution regarding the successful progress of the popular revolution in Rumania. The President of the People’s Committee for National Salvation saluted the attitudes of the great Al-Fatih revolution and the Libyan Arab people to the people of Rumania and its revolution. President Iliescu informed the brother leader of the revolution that the popular revolutionary leadership does not believe the rumors about the participation of Arabs in the fighting against the popular revolution and said that those rumors were spread by enemies in order to influence our morale, the progress of the popular revolution, and our friendship with the Arabs. President Iliescu confirmed to the brother leader of the revolution that authority will be that of the people because the popular revolution was carried out by the whole Rumanian people. President Iliescu expressed his thanks for and appreciation of the Libyan Arab people for the urgent humanitarian assistance provided by air to the Rumanian people. http://www.nytimes.com/1989/12/29/world/upheaval-in-the-east-news-reports-excerpts-from-broadcasts-and-a-press-dispatch.html Angela Bacescu with the Libyan ambassador to Romania Abu Ghula, Europa (Est/Vest), no. 94, September 1992, pp. 14-15 The Libyan ambassador discusses how on 25 or 26 December 1989 the then Libyan ambassador went on Romanian television to deny the rumors of Libyans fighting. “What is more, he called for the delivery of any Libyan terrorirsts [!]“ On 29 or 30 December, Colonel Khadaffi addressed the Romanian people by satellite. “Libya sent 4 planes with humanitarian aid (food, beds, medicine) that landed at Otopeni airport, were unloaded and then returned empty to Libya [interesting that he should have to specify that they returned empty to Libya].”

Former Securitate member and head of its successor agency, the Romanian Information Service (SRI) from 1990 to 1997 not only admits in this French documentary that Libyans and other “Arab insurgents,” including Palestinians, were trained at bases in Romania, but admits specifically that they were trained by the Securitate’s anti-terrorist unit, the USLA–just as former Securitate whistleblowers (including Roland Vasilevici and Marian Romanescu among others had told us)

We also know from Romanescu and a second source that USLA commander Gheorghe Ardeleanu (Bula Moise) addressed his troops as follows:

“On 25 December at around 8 pm, after the execution of the dictators, Colonel Ardeleanu gathered the unit’s members into an improvised room and said to them:

‘The Dictatorship has fallen! The Unit’s members are in the service of the people. The Romanian Communist Party [PCR] is not disbanding! It is necessary for us to regroup in the democratic circles of the PCR—the inheritor of the noble ideas of the people of which we are a part!…Corpses were found, individuals with USLAC (Special Unit for Antiterrorist and Commando Warfare) identity cards and identifications with the 0620 stamp of the USLA, identity cards that they had no right to be in possession of when they were found…’ He instructed that the identity cards [of members of the unit] had to be turned in within 24 hours, at which time all of them would receive new ones with Defense Ministry markings.” [7][8]

In other words, a cover-up of a now failed attempt at counter-revolution—having been cut short by the execution of the Ceausescus, the object of their struggle—had begun. In the days and weeks that were to follow, the Securitate, including people such as the seemingly ubiquitous Colonel Ghircoias discussed in the opening of this article would go about recovering those “terrorists” who were unlucky enough to be captured, injured, or killed. By 24 January 1990, the “terrorists” of the Romanian Counter-Revolution of December 1989, no longer existed, so-to-speak, and the chances for justice and truth about what had happened in December 1989 would never recover.[9]